The Missguided documentary shows a lot is wrong – but they must also be doing something right

Some believe it was a PR disaster for the online fast-fashion brand – for all the failings on display, however, there was an energy and a challenge to traditional views of high-street retail, writes Chris Blackhurst

The online fast-fashion brand featured in a Channel 4 documentary (Getty Images for Missguided)

A few years ago, I recall one of our best-known fashion retail moguls explaining to me why he had little faith in internet shopping. People – especially girls and young women, his target audience – he opined would always like the experience of going to the high street on a Saturday afternoon to browse, choose and try on clothes together.

I was thinking about him when I watched Inside Missguided: Made in Manchester, the Channel 4 documentary series about life at the offices of one our most successful online fast-fashion brands. If ever there was evidence as to how wrong he was, it was there, on the screen.

There are those who insist that the programme is an unmitigated PR disaster. I disagree. I’m observing the goings-on, hearing the constant swearing and repeated, tedious pronouncements about “female empowerment” from the largely all-female staff, and wincing. They say they want the label to appeal to all sizes, not just the skinny, yet promptly go to Ibiza to seek inspiration, and show interest only in the ultra-glamorous women who most resemble supermodels.